Brooklyn Life

One end to the Flatbush eruv on McDonald Avenue and Avenue J. Photo by James Bursa via Flickr

If you’ve ever walked around Flatbush, Williamsburg, and Crown Heights, you probably haven’t noticed the small, thin extra wires suspended between the telephone poles that mark the spiritual perimeters for Orthodox Jews living within their boundaries.

Known as an eruv (ay-roov), each wire creates an area of spiritually private space from Friday night to sundown on Saturday, the period known as Shabbat.

The 5th Annual Art of Brooklyn Film Festival is decidedly inclusive. The independent festival, which showcases Brooklyn-born, Brooklyn-based, and Brooklyn-centric films and filmakers represents every Brooklyn neighborhood and community.

It’s international, and presented by nonprofit organization The Art of Brooklyn.

Arts in Bushwick’s “Making History” pays homage to local artists by featuring exactly 400 of them in a special exhibition at Storefront Ten Eyck. The show will survey the Bushwick arts scene by including diverse artists with studios in Bushwick, who have had studios in Bushwick over the past 10 years, or who have recently participated in Bushwick gallery shows.

The exhibition, which runs from April 19 through May 10, will culminate with a benefit event. Ticket sale proceeds will go towards publishing a book celebrating Arts in Bushwick and commemorating the tenth anniversary of its Bushwick Open Studios.

You can see the full list of artists here. Tickets to the May 10 benefit are $200 and include one piece of work from a local artist. For more information or to buy tickets, go here.

Surrounded by construction and wondering if it could damage your home? Donald Friedman, an engineer specializing in the protection of older buildings, will present on how to safeguard homes from damage caused by vibration and excavation at nearby construction sites at the spring meeting at the Society for Clinton Hill.

Newtown Creek Alliance Historian and Brownstoner Queens columnist Mitch Waxman will lead a boat tour of Newtown Creek, pictured above, next month for the Working Harbor Committee. The two-hour tour of one of the nation’s most polluted waterways will leave from Pier 11 in Manhattan at 11 am on May 31.

A collection of guest speakers will also help narrate the tour. A separate two-hour tour of Gowanus Bay will leave from Pier 11 at 1:10 pm the same day.

No image of Brooklyn is more iconic than that of a family or a group of friends hanging out on their front stoop on a sunny day. In a borough full of front stoops, here are five of the most historic.

7 Arlington Place, Bedford Stuyvesant
7 Arlington Place is the famed Bed Stuy townhouse where Spike Lee shot Crooklyn in 1994. The film takes place during the summer of 1974 and centers around a family living in the neighborhood. The theatrical release poster features the family all gathered on the brownstone stoop. But the neighborhood has dramatically changed since Spike Lee lived here: this Bed Stuy brownstone last sold for $1,700,000.